Wondering what to do with your used car, truck, motorcycle or boat? Donating your old vehicle to the International Elephant Foundation (IEF), is convenient, easy, and may qualify you for a tax deduction. And best of all, your donation will make a big difference in supporting IEF’s Asian and African elephant conservation and protection programs.

All you need to do is to complete our simple online form or call 1-866-628-2277 and we’ll take care of the rest.

We will pick up your vehicle, arrange to have your donation towed, and provide you with a tax-deductible receipt, all at no charge to you.

Call 1-866-628-2277 or online at www.elephantconservation.org.

]]>https://elephantconservation.org/give-an-elephant-a-lift/feed/0Uganda’s Elephants: The Real Storyhttps://elephantconservation.org/history-of-elephants-uganda/
https://elephantconservation.org/history-of-elephants-uganda/#respondSat, 06 Feb 2016 07:05:41 +0000https://elephantconservation.org/?p=6241Uganda’s Elephants: The Real Story is a 7 minute long video. Produced with Verity White to provide schools, universities, wildlife training institute, the tourism and conservation sectors a tool to help understand Uganda’s natural heritage and history a little better.

IEF is very excited to start a new interview segment in our eNewsletter, aiming to have conservationists explain their work in their own words. We hope to inspire and show what it takes to be on the front lines of elephant conservation. We are honored to have our inaugural interview with Dr. Michele Miller. She has extensively studied tuberculosis in elephants and her project Disease Risk Analyses for Tuberculosis Detection and Prevalence in Elephants was supported by IEF.

Question: Where did you study? How did you get started?
Dr. Miller: My graduate studies were completed at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where I received a MSc and PhD in veterinary immunology and a DVM. This was followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at the San Diego Zoo Center for Reproduction of Endangered Species, investigating immune responses to various infectious diseases of wildlife. This training along with practical experience as a zoo veterinary clinician has provided a broad base for my current research.

Question: What first inspired you to focus your research on elephants?
Dr. Miller: I’ve always been fascinated with elephants since a child. Once I became a zoo veterinarian, I had the opportunity to work closely with these species and developed a life-long commitment to improving our knowledge to provide better welfare for human-managed animals and conserve wild populations.

Question: When and where did you first see an elephant in person? How did it affect you?
Dr. Miller: As a young child, my family would take me to the Milwaukee Zoo. I was enthralled watching the elephants and decided I would become a veterinarian working with wildlife. I also remember the annual circus parade in which the elephants walked down the street – their massive size and magnificent presence left a lasting impression.

Question: How important is it for the public to experience elephants in person and be inspired to care?
Dr. Miller: I think that it is very important for the public to have the opportunity to experience elephants in person. Being in the presence of elephants stimulates multiple senses – visual, olfactory, and auditory experiences that create a more complete awareness of elephants than can be provided by media such as television. Watching their complex behavior gives insight into the important role elephants play in their environment and help inspire people to learn more and become involved in conserving these species.

Question: What do you wish was more widely known about elephants?
Dr. Miller: Elephants are subject to many of the same health issues that confront other long-lived species such as humans. For instance, degenerative joint disease occurs more frequently in older elephants, just as in us as we age. Elephants are also susceptible to a variety of infectious diseases, including TB and a type of elephant herpesvirus.

Question: What misconception about elephants would you like to correct?
Dr. Miller: Elephants have very complex social interactions, which we are still learning about. They communicate through touch, smell, sound, and visual cues. It is important for their welfare that we provide adequate space and opportunity for elephants to interact with each other, whether it is in managed care or the wild.

Question: How can in-situ and ex-situ conservation work hand-in-hand?
Dr. Miller: We can learn and study animals in both the wild and managed care to understand the biology and behavior of these species. Ex-situ conservation activities can provide insight into nutritional needs, disease issues, and techniques for handling, transport, and other management, that might take much longer and be logistically more difficult to determine in wild populations. However, the information we gather from in-situ conservation creates a valuable knowledge that can improve the welfare of managed elephants. The conservation work done in-situ and ex-situ should be synergistic.

Question: How would you explain elephant TB to someone who has no experience in elephant management?
Dr. Miller: TB in elephants can be caused by the same bacteria that cause TB in humans and cattle. Most cases of elephant TB are the human form. Like humans, it is a very slow chronic disease and many elephants can be infected for years without showing any outward signs. TB can be diagnosed by taking samples from the trunk, similar to how humans are sampled (sputum), although the bacteria may not always be present even if an individual is infected. Therefore, it is important to improve our knowledge and tools for detecting TB at earlier stages so that we can prevent development of disease in the affected animal as well as minimize the risk of transmission to other animals and people.

Question: Is elephant TB treatable or curable?
Dr. Miller: Elephant TB can be treated with a course of drugs for human TB. Some of the challenges are that the drugs need to be given over a prolonged period of time (up to a year or more) and they can cause side-effects which may delay completion of treatment. Whether TB is cured or not, is difficult to determine, even in humans. Since we are unable to take chest x-rays of elephants or determine changes in disease, we don’t have good measures of how effective treatment is. However, our experience has shown that the treatment can stop the secretion of bacteria which is a risk to other animals and important in managing this disease.

Question: Can humans contract TB from elephants? If so, under what circumstances?
Dr. Miller: Although it is possible, there are no documented cases of a person getting the disease from an elephant. Under rare circumstances, people who are in close contact with elephants (such as handlers) have been shown to have a positive skin test (this is a test of exposure to the bacteria but doesn’t necessarily mean that a person has disease). Similar to TB in people, we believe that causal contact with elephants (such as at a zoo) presents a very low risk. It is probably more likely that you would get infected from other humans than elephants.

Question: How does elephant TB affect elephant conservation work? The future of elephants?
Dr. Miller: TB, like any disease issue, can impact conservation directly through loss of valuable individuals as well as indirectly through potential regulatory restrictions on movement of animals for translocation. There is incomplete understanding of the impact of this disease in both ex-situ and in-situ populations. Since this slow disease is difficult to detect even in elephants under managed care, we may not truly understand the potential impact on elephants into the future.

Question: Is there anything else you’d like to add?
Dr. Miller: The International Elephant Foundation recognizes the importance of understanding the role of disease in conservation. Through this support, we have been able to gather information that will improve our knowledge of TB in elephants and create a foundation for measuring our progress into the future

Jumbo thanks to
Michele Miller, DVM, MPH, Ph.D.
Professor, South African Research Chair in Animal TB
Stellenbosch University
DST/NRF Centre of Excellence for Biomedical Tuberculosis Research
MRC Centre for TB Research
Division of Molecular Biology and Human Genetics
Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences
Cape Town, South Africa

Michele Miller, DVM, MS, MPH, Ph.D., is staff veterinarian of wildlife medicine at the Rare Species Conservatory Foundation,. Specializing in immunology, infectious diseases and interaction with the environment. Conservation projects include desert pronghorn (Mexico), and pygmy hippo (West Africa). Current in situ projects focus on elephant and rhino issues in Africa, as well as tuberculosis issues in New World primates, elephants, large cats, wild ungulates and other captive and free-ranging wildlife.

PROFILE

Dr. Gary Hayward, John Hopkins University

(1) HOW DID YOU GET INVOLVED IN EEHV RESEARCH?
I first developed an interest in viruses and DNA as a teenager, which led me to experiment with agarose gel electrophoresis for separating bacteriophage DNA molecules of different sizes for my PhD thesis research. I published the first restriction cleavage patterns of human herpes simplex virus genomes in 1975. During a more than 45 year career in DNA research focused mostly on the molecular biology of the many different types of human herpesviruses, I always also had an interest in conservation issues as well as virus evolution and published the complete genome sequence of chimpanzee cytomegalovirus in 2004. Naturally then when Laura Richman first told me that she thought Kumari had died of a previously unknown herpesvirus infection I jumped at the chance to study the problem, including inviting her to come and do her PhD studies on EEHV in my laboratory at Johns Hopkins.

(2) WHAT ARE YOUR ONGOING RESEARCH PROJECTS?
Together with our close collaborators in Paul Ling’s group in Houston we have just assembled the complete 200,000-bp complete genome sequence of EEHV4, the fourth type of Asian elephant Proboscivirus and the first of the GC-rich branch to be so characterized. There has also been major progress in characterizing the most divergent
genes from numerous distinct EEHV1 strains directly from pathological samples collected by a concerned consortium of veterinarians and our other collaborators from all around the world. We also keep hoping to get a breakthrough in our attempts to culture and propagate these viruses from clinical samples in laboratory cell culture, and we continue efforts to generate multiple clones for expressing enough antigens from each of the sequenced EEHV species in yeast to develop a robust multiplex serology chip assay that may finally overcome the major problems of antibody cross- reactions between them.

(3) BIGGEST CHALLENGE FOR EEHV RESEARCH?
Understanding why 20% of Asian elephant calves worldwide are susceptible to life-threatening acute hemorrhagic disease when undergoing primary infection with EEHV1 (or sometimes other EEHV types), whereas African elephants which harbor just as many types of EEHV species of their own hardly ever get disease. Other than our very successful virus hunting and diagnostic DNA tests that have identified clinical samples suitable for extensive genetic characterization there is little hope of significant further progress in understanding or combating this devastating disease without a major influx of new research funding. Whilst I still ran an active well-funded research laboratory studying human herpesvirus disease it was easy to borrow expertise and a little bit of time and effort from my postdoctoral fellows to clone and express EEHV genes, or carry out IFA and IHC assays or develop specific rabbit antibodies for example, but that is no longer the case, and the number of hands-on laboratory personnel involved have now dwindled down from five or six to just three and dropping. Furthermore, both Virginia Pearson (our collaborator on African elephant herpesvirus identification) and I have been working extensively essentially as unpaid volunteers for several years now. The International Elephant Foundation, the Morris Animal Foundation and a Collections Stewardship Leadership grant from the IMLS have contributed essential funding that has kept our EEHV research projects limping along, but my group will have to totally close down within a year or so without the kind of generous funding from a private donor that currently supports the EEHV research in Paul Ling’s laboratory at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

(4) WHERE DO YOU SEE EEHV PREVENTION, DIAGNOSIS AND TREATMENT IN FIVE YEARS?
No real change. There is at present virtually nothing known about the immunology of the elephant hosts themselves or of this novel new group of mammalian herpesviruses. Without cell culture and lots of funding, there is also really no realistic hope of vaccines within the near future, and it is only the ability to carry out close blood test DNA monitoring of calves and to respond to “viremic” illness with rapid good medical care that has improved the management of the disease in the USA in recent years. But it has been a major financial challenge just to keep the dedicated expertise necessary for this in Erin Latimer’s NEHL diagnostic laboratory, as well as in my molecular genetic strain subtyping group, together from one year to the next, let alone get serious about any more extensive efforts at finding better anti-EEHV drugs or exploring the mechanisms of EEHV pathogenesis.

International Elephant Foundation IEF funded a project to conduct 10 Human Elephant Coexistence street plays, two days teacher- training workshops and 2 school education programmes in Erode Forest Division, Tamil Nadu. Zoo Outreach Organization conducted several teacher-training workshops in India (Tamil Nadu, Kerala, West Bengal), Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan, Indonesia and Thailand. This had an escalating effect in which participants of the training have created momentum in their institution or organization or on their own and as the educators they trained, educated more students.

]]>https://elephantconservation.org/conservation-project-grant-application-2016/feed/0Appreciation of Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey Supporthttps://elephantconservation.org/appreciation-of-ringling-bros-barnum-bailey-support/
https://elephantconservation.org/appreciation-of-ringling-bros-barnum-bailey-support/#respondFri, 06 Mar 2015 05:22:20 +0000https://elephantconservation.org/?p=4887For years, Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey has provided an opportunity for children and adults to see elephants up close and be amazed at their size, agility and intelligence, and in many this experience grew into a love of animals and the environment. What is not as well known is the incredible commitment that Ringling Bros. and the Feld family have made to the preservation of the critically endangered Asian elephant through their support of the International Elephant Foundation (IEF) and their own conservation programs supporting both wild and captive elephants in Sri Lanka.

The tragic decimation of some African elephant populations for their ivory tusks is currently receiving the worldwide attention it deserves but the fight to protect all elephants continues to be an uphill battle. A more important story, is that not all elephants are under the same threat of poaching. The Asian elephant, which has more than ten times fewer individuals – 30,000 – 40,000 Asian elephants worldwide compared to 300,000 – 500,000 African elephants – is disappearing at an unprecedented rate throughout Southeast Asia due to habitat loss and human-elephant conflict. Every day Asian elephants are killed because their habitat is being taken by large-scale plantations, development concessions for logging/mining/road construction, altered by dams, small-scale farmers and growing rural communities.

This is a message that will no longer be as effectively communicated to the millions of people who attend Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey Circus annually to see elephants. At a time when elephants are at risk of disappearing from the planet, we are sad that fewer children and adults will be able to see and develop a connection with a live Asian elephant in their home town, but IEF is pleased that Ringling Bros’ commitment to Asian elephants and their conservation will continue and even grow.

IEF is an organization working diligently and successfully for conservation of elephants. If you would like to learn more about the IEF or any of its many elephant conservation and research projects please visit theInternational Elephant Foundation website.

HOUSTON — A deadly virus that often leads to the death of young Asian elephants in North America, Europe and range countries was the focus of international researchers, veterinarians and elephant care experts attending the 10th International Elephant Endotheliotropic Herpesvirus Workshop here on Feb. 17-18.

Hosted by Houston Zoo with support from the International Elephant Foundation, the workshop featured virology, medical and elephant care experts from Asia, Europe and North America. For the first time since the workshops began in 2005, EEHV cases of afflicted baby elephants saved through early treatments were shared. It demonstrates progress in the struggle to understand and treat virus strains that are so complex, researchers have yet to be able to culture the virus which is necessary to create a vaccine and determine what drugs are most effective.

“Information sharing is critical, because what we don’t know hurts our chances for saving young elephants stricken by these viruses,” said Houston Zoo Associate Veterinarian Lauren L. Howard, one of the workshop organizers. “While there are still many unanswered questions, we’ve made critical advancements in EEHV research and improvements in detection and treatments that have resulted in saving lives.”
The elephant care teams at Houston Zoo reported at the workshop their promising successes that occurred last fall when treating two young elephants, both 4 years old, for EEHV infections. The zoo previously lost five calves to the virus.

Howard said that in both cases the virus was detected in the calves’ blood during weekly tests. The zoo began doing the routines tests as a result of its EEHV research and protocols. Others zoos, including in St. Louis and Maryland, and Whipsnade Zoo in the UK, have also successfully treated EEHV cases in recent years. Highlights of these promising cases were presented at the workshop. “It’s good news that North American zoos have not lost an elephant to EEHV in last 5 years,” she said.

EEHV is also found in elephants living in Asian range countries, where it poses a threat to elephant populations already under pressures from habitat loss and human-elephant conflict. Presenter Khajohnpat Boonprasert, with the Elephant Hospital for The Elephant Conservation Center in Thailand, shared a recent case in which they successfully treated a 2-year-old wild, orphan Asian elephant. “We
have learned how to treat some infections with very helpful information from EEHV workshops and zoos around the world. We still need more data to support treatments. Any details of the disease are helpful for range countries,” said Boonprasert.

Twenty-one calves in European zoos have died of EEHV including four in the last two years. Advancements in treatment are coming as a result of several collaborations among research institutions like Baylor College of Medicine and Johns Hopkins University in the U.S. and Erasmus Medical Center (Netherlands), Nottingham University (UK), Murdoch University (Australia), University of Zurich (Switzerland), Animal and Plant Health Agency (UK), and zoological centers caring for elephants. The best way to develop knowledge about and research into EEHV and other wildlife diseases, and ultimately cures or vaccines can be found, is through observing, studying and breeding elephants in human care in developed countries like the U.S. which have sophisticated research resources. This knowledge and experience can then be employed to battle the impact of such diseases on the rapidly disappearing populations of highly endangered Asian elephants.

Another outcome of these collaborations is the EEHV Advisory Group. Organized last year, the volunteer group of EEHV subject matter experts is focused on keeping global researchers and elephant care givers informed about research advancements and science-based management recommendations. At the workshop, the Advisory Group also announced a refreshed and expanded on-line resource for EEHV information www.EEHVINFO.org.

Many EEHV researchers at this week’s Houston workshop are expected to gather again later this year for the first EEHV Workshop in Asia hosted by Singapore Zoo.

For more information contact: Deborah Olson, International Elephant Foundation

]]>https://elephantconservation.org/eehv-workshop-2015/feed/0A Jumbo-Sized Reunion – Wildlife Safari (Video too)https://elephantconservation.org/a-jumbo-sized-reunion-wildlife-safari/
https://elephantconservation.org/a-jumbo-sized-reunion-wildlife-safari/#respondFri, 27 Feb 2015 02:33:08 +0000https://elephantconservation.org/?p=4775Watch the Video as Wildlife Safari is excited to announce a jumbo-sized family reunion! Liz, a 51-year-old Asian elephant, and Valerie, a 33-year-old African elephant arrived after a short trip from Six Flags Discovery Kingdom in Vallejo, California. Liz and Valerie have rejoined their companion, Tava, who came to Wildlife Safari two years ago. Liz, Valerie and Tava expressed their excitement to see one another in typical elephant fashion: there were lots of rumbles and even a few trumpets when all three were in the barn together.

Tava and Valerie’s relationship is similar to that of sisters, whereas Liz’s role is that of a matriarch. Liz’s life experiences, coupled with her dominant personality, make her a natural leader. Liz and Valerie also join George and Moja, bringing Wildlife Safari’s elephant family to a total of five. We are proud that we are able to provide an opportunity for Liz, Tava and Valerie to be reunited and are thrilled about the additional dynamics these two wonderful elephant personalities will bring to our herd and our program.

Over the coming weeks, we will keep you all informed as to how the girls are settling in. Keep an eye on our website and Facebook page—we’ll have an ele-fantastic welcome party for them soon where everyone will have a chance to welcome Liz and Valerie to their new home.

Wildlife Safari is also proud to announce that we are making a $5,000 donation to the International Elephant Foundation in honor of this jumbo-sized reunion and in recognition of all the lives the Wildlife Safari elephant family have touched. We have decided to designate these funds to anti-poaching efforts in Africa in an effort to do everything we can to secure a future for elephants.

Wildlife Safari believes in spreading a message of conservation by providing our guests with extremely unique opportunities to experience animals. Elephants are facing a very real threat of extinction; African elephants in particular are being poached at a rate of 96 per day just for their ivory tusks. By allowing our guests the opportunity to visit with and get to know elephants, we have allowed a bond to form between human and elephant which translates into a desire to protect these incredible animals for future generations. A dollar from each of our encounters also goes directly to conservation efforts.

#Tweet4Elephants event

in Nairobi on 13th January at 6 pm Kenya Time (3pm-5pm GMT). (10am-Noon EST)

As you may know, we have made huge progress in Kenya on protecting elephants, and stopping the trafficking of ivory across our borders in the last 12 months. Three major achievements include:

New and aggressive penalties in our new Wildlife Conservation and Management Act.
Creation of a dedicated team of wildlife prosecutors
Interpol assisted arrest of suspected Kenyan ivory kingpin, Feisal Mohamed Ali in Tanzania, repatriation and his prosecution in a Kenyan court.

WildlifeDirect through it’s Hands Off Our Elephants Campaign has played a major role in creating awareness and mobilizing public support for elephants to end the slaughter of our elephants.

We are participating in a #Tweet4Elephants event in Nairobi on 13th January at 6 pm Kenya Time (3pm GMT, 10am EST). The event is being generously hosted by the United States Ambassador to Kenya, Robert F. Godec.

Participants in a room will engage in a live discussion and include a diverse cross-section of society from conservation experts, to international musicians, top Kenyan bloggers and social media experts, as well as members of communities, NGO’s, the business and government sectors. The discussion promises to be quite lively, and it will be shared online through twitter to include all who are interested. We will examine the poaching crisis and efforts to end poaching, trafficking and demand for ivory.

We would like to invite you and your partner organizations around the world to participate in the conversation by following the twitter hashtag #Tweet4Elephants at 3pm GMT (6 – 8 pm in Nairobi).

Elephant poaching threatens our shared global heritage, help us infect the world with a love for these magnificent animals through a global conversation to save them.